Beast of the Week: Bubble fun, hamsters making their own roundabout and a cat who just wants some privacy

There’s nothing Hayley Ellis likes more than captivating videos of animals going about their daily doings. She shares the best of them at Standard Issue for our unadulterated pleasure.

Posted on 25/08/2015

Hello and welcome to Beast of the Week.

Do you like your animals in human clothes mouthing the words to poetry? Do you like watching hamsters eat food to the music of the Outhere Brothers? Then this is the place for you. (Also we should totally be pals because my enjoyment of these limits my options for friendship groups.)

I’d like to start this week by publicly stating I will never be letting my dog off the lead again thanks to Mudgate2015. It’s still very traumatic to talk about, but think my dog looking like the final scene in Carrie, if it was remade for dogs, with mud instead of blood and… OK, so very different but equally as scarring on your cream carpet.

I’ll park this picture right here.

Thinking about it, there are lots of films that could have been made better had animals been in the mix. The Shawshank Redemption could have been immeasurably improved with the introduction of a rabbit (calm yourself, not that type). Fair enough, it may have taken away from some of the more poignant scenes when the tension would have likely been broken by the sound of carrot crunching, but still, the film would have been 40 minutes shorter when the rabbit piped in (SPOILER ALERT!) and helped Andy to tunnel out.

Mind you, it doesn’t always shorten films when we imagine animals being employed. If Taxi Driver had been made with a budgie, we still would have had the “Are you talking to me?” mirror scene on a loop. It just would have been called something different, like Look Who’s Talking (Cocka)Too.

(I know, I’m sorry. )

Finally, if The Silence of the Lambs had actually starred lambs, then Anthony Hopkins’ Hannibal may not have been a cannibal, but more a carnivore with a strange manner. (Granted, Harnivore the Carnivore does not have the same ring.)

But take it down to a 12A rating and my mum wouldn’t be terrified of fava beans anymore. Chianti she’s fine with, also Merlot and Shiraz and… anyway, onto this week’s animal clips.

Cats, sometimes they want to be alone.

I call this clip ‘two hamsters one wheel’, which sounds like an adult film Richard Gere would watch.*

*allegedly

And finally, this clip has brought me nothing but happiness. If it doesn’t make you smile you are dead inside.

If you have any animal clips that you would like to suggest for this column give me a tweet @hayles_ellis.